


Twice I said I love you

by Amielleon



Category: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Flawed Protagonist, Not Happy, Pretentious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5542910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amielleon/pseuds/Amielleon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kamui partakes in empathy/fantasy as she tries to understand the pain of her husband/herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twice I said I love you

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [moonboots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/moonboots/) for betaing. If you're confused about some details of Zero's personal history (that Niles doesn't have), [read this](http://ammie-plays-fe14.tumblr.com/post/141165903132/i-was-wondering-how-did-you-come-to-the).

_“I didn't think he'd want me for—”_

_The boy is small and thin and naked, arms ineffectual as he pushes at his attacker. The man throws him onto the dingy bed like a helpless doll. The boy is so young, his face and eyes are round as he looks over, his eyes pleading, like a prayer for his invisible onlooker to intervene as the man in one surging motion penetrates him._

Kamui sticks her feet out from the end of the blanket. It's too hot. But if she goes without the blanket it will be too cold. She wants to tell this to Zero, because if he agrees that this blanket is too hot for this time of year in Loulan, maybe it will motivate her to get up and find a lighter one. Or they could find a lighter one together.

But Zero isn't back yet. He likes to do his own thing in the hours before they sleep together. She doesn't know what it is. “Unspeakable things,” he said with a sly grin, before hastening to assure her that he wasn't breaking any of their vows. He's probably learning to sew or something silly like that, because it would embarrass him to do it in the presence of others. Men.

_The boy is in pain. The man throws him onto the dingy bed like a helpless doll. He's scared, and afraid, and in pain. The man's cock is too large and it feels like it'll split him open._

Kamui lets some air in under the blankets.

It really isn't like the other times she'd envisioned the disturbing details of what someone told her. Not because of how horrible, how intense, how alarming. When she was young she had overheard the guards saying that they had “drawn and quartered” a traitor at the capital. She had badgered an explanation out of Gunther and spent a week imagining bones popping out of joints, flesh tearing like old cloth, blood and guts pouring out onto the dirty street. 

It isn't that.

The door finally opens. Zero slips in. He pulls his shirt over his head, gives it two quick folds, and leaves it neatly on the dresser. By the light leaking in through the window, she can see the edges of his well-muscled body. He sets his eyepatch on top of his shirt. He takes off his shoes and puts them by the foot of the bed. Then he lifts the other half of the blanket and settles into the bed.

Kamui turns around to face him. She pulls her cold feet back under the blanket.

“Did I wake you?” he says.

“No,” she says. “I was waiting. I missed you.”

“Hm.” He pulls the pillow down a bit as he makes himself comfortable on his side. Then his hand finds hers under the sheets. “I love you, you know,” he says casually. His palm is large and rough where it lays above the back of her hand.

She wonders if he meant _thank you for loving me_. “I love you,” she says back.

He looks at her with his eye, and then closes it. She thinks for a moment that she should say something. Then she closes her eyes too.

It might not be right to say anything at all, out of—curiosity? It isn't really curiosity. His tale tangled itself within her mind, so horrible that she couldn't just leave it be, like needing to touch her hand to a wound. As if touching it might reassure her that it could heal.

She has no right to ask. He had tried to tell her before. She made him stop. And now she pores over his story by herself, as if it were somehow hers. _The boy is small and helpless and in pain and the man seizes him—_

(“I was exaggerating a little,” he said with a wave of his hand. She thinks he wasn't.)

Zero's form rises large beside her. If she laid an arm around him, she could not fit his side within the curve of her elbow. He smells of soap, and under that, his own masculine human scent. The skin of his hand is rough with callouses.

The blankets are too warm.

“Aren't you hot?” she says.

They look at each other, their faces a foot apart. “Aren't I hot?” Zero says playfully.

Kamui lets out a groan. “I mean it's really warm tonight.”

“It feels fine to me.”

“I think it's hot. This blanket is too thick.”

“Should I get you a lighter one?” Zero says.

She doesn't want him to get back up and leave her waiting again. “No. Never mind.”

He lets out a sigh and turns onto his back. It bothers her more than it should. She shifts closer and lays her cheek on his shoulder. “I've been thinking about you,” she says.

“Oh?” he says.

“Mm.” The skin of his shoulder is soft and too warm. “You know when we were first getting to know each other, and I asked you about the kind of life you had lived...” Zero turns his head back toward her to watch her. She thinks, _I'm sorry for cutting you off / I wish I hadn't stopped you / I should have let you finish_ and finally says, not knowing if it's the right choice, “I'm sorry I didn't let you finish.”

A grin cracks across Zero's face and she can hear the laugh he stifled and let out through his nose. “Don't be. Like I said, I was messing with you.”

“I mean, it was important to you. And I just—closed off to you, I guess.”

“I was trying to scare you. If anything, I should apologize.” He rolls back toward her, kisses her on the forehead, and says, “You are so sweet. I like you that way.”

She lays there, close to Zero, feeling the heat radiate from his body. He runs a hand down her side. She says, “I think I'm going to get a lighter blanket.”

She places her feet into her sandals and pads out of their room. She is the ruler of the heavens and the victor of a war. And yet everyone from her husband to her cousin to her servants still treats her as a sheltered child.

She finds the linen closet herself. There's a thin quilt that looks perfect. She gingerly pulls it out from underneath the other blankets stacked on top.

Somewhere within her she always knew that she was being kept prisoner in the fortress. She wanted nothing more than to leave. She wanted adventure. Love. And pain, in forms purer and more sympathetic than her own.

Kamui brings the quilt back to her chambers. Zero has pulled the blanket over and turned to lie on his other side. She looks down at the exposed bedsheet on her half of the bed. Then she lays the blanket down, keeping neatly to her half as she crawls back in. After walking about the palace in her nightclothes, she feels a little bit cold.

“Zero?” she says. He grunts in response. She touches a hand to his shoulderblade. “I love you, Zero.”

“I love you too,” he mumbles.

She watches Zero's back where his shoulders show from under his blanket. In the dark, only his broad outline is visible. Looking at him now, she had the feeling that even if he told her, she could never quite know the boy he had been—only pitiful doppelgangers in the theater of her own mind. She wonders if she even knows who he is right now, if she could conjure the faintest idea of how he feels as he's comfortably warm and half-asleep and keeping to himself in their bed.

She shifts to the very edge of her pillow, the ends of his hair nearly reaching her nose. The bodies that have housed them for a lifetime are so close.

She hugs the quilt around herself. She has almost everything she wanted as a lonely child. She never imagined that real love would disappoint her.


End file.
